THE HETCH HETCHY SCHEME

Why It Should Not Be Rushed Through the Extra Session

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Fellow-Owners of the Yosemite National Park:

For twelve years the city of San Francisco has been trying to obtain from the Government the gift of the wonderful Hetch Hetchy Valley, eighteen miles from the Yosemite Valley and one of the chief attractions of the greatest of your National Parks. The plea has been that the Hetch Hetchy is the only available source of water supply for the city--this being the only plausible reason for the scheme, which involves the destruction of the valley, by flooding it as a reservoir, and the exclusion of the public from two of the three chief camping-places amid this phenomenally beautiful scenery, and from access to twenty miles of the most remarkable cascades in the world. The language of hyperbole is the only appropriate medium to describe the features of your Yosemite National Park. Better that there had never been a Niagara than that the northern half of the Park should thus be diverted from the use of the public. The Hetch Hetchy is a veritable temple of the Living God, and again the money-changers are in the temple!

For these twelve years a few public-spirited men in California and elsewhere, led by John Muir, "California's grand old man," and supported by eight or ten national organizations, have succeeded in thwarting this project. Their attitude is not quixotic. They say: If San Francisco could nowhere else obtain an abundant supply of good water, supreme necessity would require that the valley should be placed at its disposal. But they claim that not until the city has demonstrated that the supply cannot be obtained from any other source should any concession be made to its demands. And they further claim that the city is under obligations to prove this negative--that the Hetch Hetchy is not merely desirable, but that it is absolutely necessary. The importance of the reasons for dismembering your Park must be equal to the importance of the reasons for its creation. And the reasons for dismembering it must not be accepted as final when they come from the party in interest. Otherwise we shall pay too high a price for San Francisco's water.

I wish to call your attention to some aspects of this project that amount to a scandal. Its proponents have been defeated four times--once before Secretary Hitchcock of the Interior Department, again before the Senate Committee on Public Lands in 1909--10, again before Secretary Ballinger, and again before Secretary Fisher. Secretary Lane has refused to take the responsibility of applying first to the Hetch Hetchy the revocable grant given by Secretary Garfield, and even Mr. Garfield thought that by compelling the city first to take the Lake Eleanor watershed (which it could have without opposition) the Hetch Hetchy would never be in danger. The city, by which is meant its supervisors, taking advantage of the announcement that no general legislation would be considered at the extra session, and the fact that the opponents were therefore off their guard--many being absent or ill--have invented an "emergency" and with the aid of salaried officials who have been at Washington for several months, and, with a fund of $45,000,000 (water-supply bond issue of 1910) to draw upon for expenses, are endeavoring to rush through a drastic measure that would turn over to the city five hundred square miles--half your National Park. The scandal consists in these facts: (1) That the appeal is made on ex parte evidence furnished by the city and not fully verified by the Advisory Board of Army Engineers appointed by Secretary Fisher, and (2) that in presenting data to this Board the city actually withheld a report showing that the Mokelumne River region will afford abundant resources at a smaller expense.
Before considering this other source of supply, let me cite two damaging statements of a general nature. At the hearing before the Public Lands Committee of the Senate, Mr. Nelson of Minnesota in the chair, Mr. McCutcheon said to Mr. James D. Phelan, then and now the most conspicuous advocate of the scheme, substantially this:
"You know, Mr. Phelan, that you could go out over night anywhere along the Sierra and get an abundant supply of pure water for the city."

"Yes," said Mr. Phelan, "by paying for it."

And Mr. Manson (another advocate) echoed, "Yes, by paying for it."

This is matter of record and has never been disputed. It shows that the object of the scheme is to get something for nothing--the simplest sort of a commercial "grab". The nation is called upon to make sacrifice of its noblest pleasure ground, not to save the lives or the health of San Franciscans but their dollars--and, moreover, to supply water not merely for drinking but for power!

Again, the report of the Army Board states the belief of its members that the city's reports on other sources besides the Sacramento and the Tuolumne (Hetch Hetchy) are not thorough and complete, "due largely, it is thought, to the lack of importance and impracticability, from the point of view of the city authorities, of any source of supply other than the upper Tuolumne." This report was made on the order of the Interior Department that the city should investigate and report on all possible available sources. It has not done so in good faith. This report of the Army Board, it is understood, was drawn up by H. H. Wadsworth, Assistant Engineer and Secretary of the Board, who on July 1, 1913, said he had not seen the elaborate report favorable to the Mokelumne River region known as the Bartell report, and added: "I am very confident that no such report was submitted to the Board." This is confirmed by Colonel Biddle, chairman of the Board, in a telegram to me.

The plain fact is that the Bartell report to the city of April, 1912, though it was made for the city, proved an obstacle to the theories and purposes of the supervisors, and therefore was withheld by them from the Army Board, substitution being made of a report after a brief investigation by Engineer Grunsky (July, 1912), placing the resources of the Mokelumne at 60,000,000 instead of 432,000,000 gallons daily! This withholding constitutes an important suppression of the truth, and was a wrong to the Board, to the city's expert (Mr. Freeman), to the members of both Houses of Congress, and to every other American citizen.

If the legislation is not railroaded through Congress, an even fuller report of the Mokelumne resources than that of the Engineer Bartell will be presented, along with an offer of rights and sites, by the Sierra Blue Lakes and Water Power Co.

The advantages claimed for this source over that of Hetch Hetchy are:
• (1) It would obviate the invasion of your National Park.
• (2) It would save seventy miles of tunneling, much of it through solid rock.
• (3) It would be a shorter route by sixty-five miles.
• (4) It could be completed in four years, as against the ten needed to make Hetch Hetchy available.
• (5) Its owners will offer it to the city at a price to be arbitrated.
• (6) Its watershed is virtually in a Forest Reserve (not a National Park) and thus is more fully protected than a scenic resort like Hetch Hetchy.

The fact is that with the $45,000,000 at their command, the city made a most elaborate investigation of the source desired, and very inadequate investigation of all but one of the others. A Congressional investigation may be necessary to reveal whether there was any sinister reason for this attitude.

The country ought to know that the grant to the city would do an immeasurable wrong to the residents of California's greatest valley, the San Joaquin. Without water this valley is almost a desert; with water it is a paradise. This central valley of California should have prior claim on the water. I well know the purposes of Congress in creating the Yosemite National Park, for I was the only person who advocated it before the Public Lands Committee of the House in 1890. These were primarily to preserve the great scenery for the use and recreation of the whole nation, to defend the forests against destruction by herds of sheep--"hoofed locusts," as Mr. Muir called them--and to conserve the waters of the region for purposes of irrigation in the San Joaquin Valley. The residents in that valley are overwhelmingly against this legislation, and although the city seems to have arranged with the Turlock and Modesto Irrigation representatives, the people are not satisfied. This is particularly true of the Waterford region and other large regions dependent for prosperity on the Yosemite Park sources. In order to silence the opposition of the irrigation interests the city's agents have agreed to divide with them the waters of the coveted valley. The spectacle of thus parceling out the resources of one of God's most beautiful creations has had no counterpart since the casting of lots for the raiment of Jesus.

In the face of these facts, where is the "emergency" requiring the passage of this piece of inexcusable folly? There is an emergency, but it lies in the other direction: the emergency is that unless as American citizens you protest to your representatives in both houses of Congress, your great National Park is likely to be lost to you and your descendants forever. Yosemite Valley will become "the back door of San Francisco," and a precedent will be established under which all your other National Parks will become the loot of corporations, private or municipal. The pretense of the supervisors is that there is a shortage of water--this in the face of a reserve of 100,000,000 gallons per day of the local water company, to which Lobos creek and the wells of the city can add 8,510,000 gallons, while the water in driven wells is said to be virtually inexhaustible.

But even if there were a shortage, the resources of the Hetch Hetchy ten years from now would not meet the emergency.
I have said nothing here of the offer of the local company, the Spring Valley, to sell to the city all its vested interests and options, which it claims would solve the problem for a hundred years, nor of the desirability of establishing a great filtration scheme, such as London is about to do, abandoning the plan of piping from the Welch mountains. These are pertinent considerations and they are new to the present Congress, and time should be given to them. This piece of vandalism, so repugnant to the enlightened opinion of the country, can only be rushed through by the deference of the judgment of Congress to the statements of interested parties. A complete investigation of other sources (which the Army Board states that it has had neither time nor facilities to make) should be undertaken by an impartial commission.

Col. Heuer, U. S. Engineer, said in 1898: "Engineers who made surveys of Lake Eleanor and Hetch Hetchy inform me that there are other Sierra supplies which can be brought here at much less cost than the Hetch Hetchy. The latter by persistent advocates has been preached, almost forced, into acceptance by the people of San Francisco."
The simple issue is not "Shall San Francisco have a satisfactory water supply?" but "Shall the National Park be dismembered and Hetch Hetchy destroyed unnecessarily?" The report of the Army Board is quoted in favor of the scheme. But it includes the following significant, if not conclusive, paragraph:

"The Board is of the opinion that there are several sources of water supply that could be obtained and used by the City of San Francisco and adjacent communities to supplement the nearby supplies as the necessity develops. From anyone of these sources the water is sufficient in quantity and is, or can be made, suitable in quality. While the engineering difficulties are not insurmountable, the determining factor is one of cost."
In other words, the American people are asked to subsidize the city's water supply to the extent of the money value of Hetch Hetchy and of five hundred square miles of phenomenal scenery. Put up at auction, what would this wonderland bring? "What am I bid," the auctioneer might say, "for one superb valley, twenty miles of unique cascades, half-a-dozen snow peaks, beautiful upland meadows, noble forests, etc., now owned by a gentleman named Uncle Sam, suspected of not being able to administer his own property? Do I hear $20,000,000 to start the bidding? Remember that these natural features are priceless."

Will the reader of these lines also remember that fact?

Citizens, will you not help prevent this outrage by writing in protest, however briefly, to your Senators and Representative, and to Hon. Reed Smoot, U. S. Senate, and Hon. F. W. Mondell, M. C., Washington, D. C., and to the press, and by asking others to do the same? "They have rights who dare maintain them."

Respectfully yours,

Robert Underwood Johnson.
327 Lexington Avenue, New York.
August 1, 1913.